


Guitar Buddies

by footnoterphone



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: as usual there are two ways to interpret this, team montreal shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4318659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/footnoterphone/pseuds/footnoterphone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is a terrible idea," Guillaume snorts dryly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guitar Buddies

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to potatoholic and ruslena-fairy for betaing this craziness, and thank you to Team Montreal, whose social media accounts are a true gift during this very long off-season.
> 
> (Also, there's a jab at Ruslan Zhiganshin in this, and I swear I do not mean it, it's characterization.)

Gabi wonders what you do, after the fall, what you do when you peak at 19.  Not that she plans to peak for another eight years, but sometimes she has to pinch herself, to remember that she is awake, that this is real. She knows from hard experience that the moment everything starts to assemble, everything tends to fall to pieces again.  

She wonders, sometimes, if in a year's time, she'll end up like Elena, skating with some lesser boy, running around the Worlds banquet, taking too-cheerful pictures with everyone else, finishing well off the podium at an event you were destined to win.  Her fortunes had changed fast, once, already.  Gabi knows nothing is ever written in the stars.  

Enter Zach, his eyes full of stars and for no one but Madi; and Madi, who skates around the rink in their off-time, mooning after Adria.  Madi and Adria might still be together, and Zach and Madi might be fighting with Alex and Mitch, and Team Montreal is suddenly a tinderbox of loyalties and emotions.  It's a ticking time bomb, and Marie-France—queen of dating your partner—has definitely had Talks with all involved.  

(Gabi knows this in a strictly off the record sense, which means it's all _completely_ true—Guillaume told her, after Patrice told Romain, who told him, and Guillaume had relayed this all to her as she cooked dinner, in a breathless sort of voice that told her that he was going to have a hard time keeping his mouth shut, no matter what she did.) 

Gabi remembers when Montreal was just a sleepy rink with young teams and no dramatics.  Nothing is written in the stars, after all.

 

*

 

The next day, she, Guillaume, Zach, Mitch, and Sara walk in on Madi and Adria making out in the weight room.  It's a literal, cliched walking-in-on; Sara flips the lights on and the two of them skitter apart like teenagers.  Zach gulps, and Guillaume sighs audibly, and all of them just stand there awkwardly until Alex skips in a few minutes later, totally oblivious.   Alex and Mitch hide in a corner, doing abs and whispering, like they're afraid of catching Zach and Madi's drama.  

Gabi tells Guillaume that it's his turn to cook dinner, so he leaves five minutes before she does.  The gym is clearing out, and when Adria and Madi slink off together, _again_ Zach turns to Gabi and says, "I broke up with _her_ , you know."  

Gabi feigns ignorance, badly.  "I know not what this—I mean to say—"

"And I took it back the next day!" Zach continues, because apparently Gabi's participation in this conversation is optional.  Alex meets her eyes in the mirror as she and Mitch skitter out of the room.  "And I didn't even mean—I just thought—I just wanted to _try_ us not being a couple for a little while, just to _see_."  

"But this feeling," Gabi tries again, because apparently she's an inveterate fixer.  "This feeling you have, it comes from somewhere."   

Zach does not buy this.  "Stupidity, that's where it comes from," he says.  He scowls harshly at her, even as he sinks down onto the bench of one of the machines near her.  

"Zach," she says again, suddenly exasperated.  She crosses in front of him, turning back before in the doorway to face him.  "Things change.  Do not let this—I mean—you still need to skate together.  Be _careful_."  

 

*

 

Gabi's freshly showered, bag packed, and heading for the door, when she overhears Madi and Adria's whispered fight.  She doesn't mean to hear it—exactly—but maybe she's been living with Guillaume too long, because she slows her step, perks up her ears.  

"Things with me and Zach just ended so weird, ok?!" Madi hisses from around a corner.  Despite herself, Gabi stops in her tracks, pretending to retie her shoe laces.  She takes painstaking care with each shoe, tying precise little knots, double knots.  "I just need some time before I can be, like, a normal relationship girl, ok?"

Adria exhales sharply.  "This isn't _fair_ , not to me, and you _know that_."  

Now it's Madi's turn to sigh.  "Baby, do we have to have this fight _again_?"  She should sound exhausted, but Gabi hears more than a note of seduction in Madi’s voice.  "C'mon," Madi purrs.  "Let's just go back to your place and..."

"Maybe we should just go stand in front of Zach's apartment building," Adria snaps.  "I'm not a fucking _replacement_ , Madi."  

They continue in this vein for some moments more, but Gabi suddenly realizes that there's something worse than these dramatics: the two of them coming around the corner and _seeing_ her, obviously eavesdropping, and sucking her into this vortex of drama.  

That would certainly be the end of her magical year.  

Gabi fishes her phone out of her bag, jamming headphones into her ears, and careens around the corner without ever turning the music on.  

She's almost skipping by the time she gets home, and she repeats everything she heard to Guillame, because fair is fair.  

"Ils sont _impossible_ ," Guillaume almost trills, in response.  "C'est très drôle."  His voice is dry, and derisively amused, and Gabi rolls her eyes.

They walk downtown to get coffee, later——it's too close to the season to eat gelato, but Gabi loves walking around downtown Montreal at night—and a few blocks from home, Gabi spots Zach nursing what appears to be not the first truly ill-advised beer of his night.  

"Je te vois à l'appartement," Gabi breezes, dismissively, at Guillaume, and leaves him open- mouthed, to investigate Zach.  

"Haeeey," Zach drawls, his American accent stretching thick across his words, like all Americans do when they are drunk.  "Hoooww're yooou?"  

Gabi tuts at him, and recoils when he reaches out for her shoulder.  He's going for suave, she can tell, and the effect is somewhat dampened when he falls forward, off his barstool, and she has to steady him.  "Don't be an idiot," she says briskly.  "You did not give up everything you did, to ruin it all now, by being an idiot."  

"I should have known she would replace me so quickly," Zach moans into his hands.  "I'm an idiot."  

"Yes," Gabi agrees solemnly.  "You are."  

Zach lurches for her again, and this time she laughs when she catches him by his elbows and maneuvers him back onto his stool.  She sits down next to him, and they sit in amiable mostly-silence for a few minutes, before Zach ham-handedly asks, "Do you want to come back to my apartment?"  

The thing is...it could have been disgusting.  Gabi could have wanted to slap him, to call him _pig_ , to cry on the phone to Marie-France that _this was a terrible idea_.  It could have been disgusting, but somehow it was just equal parts pathetic and hilarious.  

She rolls her eyes.  "Don't be an idiot," she says again, but warmer this time.  

Zach flings his head into his arms, against the bar.  "I just—” he chokes.  “I just need someone to be my friend and make Madi jealous!" he wails.  

And this, too—it could be pathetic; Gabi could think that they have invited emotional toddlers into their home, she could want to reach across this table and strangle him with her bare hands.  Instead, she laughs again, short and unexpected.  

"Ordinarily I would say that this is a terrible idea," she says.  

Zach raises his head to look at her.  "But...?" he prods.  

"But,” she smiles, slyly. “I am very much interested in learning the guitar. And Guillaume, he does not like when I play into the night.  And besides," she continues.  "Maybe if you see, you know, if Madi does or does not become jealous, you will know if you should be upset about her, or no."

Zach shoots her a tremulous look.  He drunkenly pays his tab, and Gabi walks him to the train, careful to leave two feet between them, so as to not leave any misconceptions.  She has a boyfriend, and even if she didn't, she was not interested in this emotional toddler.  But American ice dancers, they're always not talking about their feelings, so in words and deeds, Gabi wants to be very clear.  

She's almost hopping as she tells this all to Guillaume later, in their postage stamp-sized kitchen.  He's drinking tea, and has his face mask on already, and she can still read his amusement in every twitch of his face and his voice.  

"Cela est une idée terrible," Guillaume snorts dryly.  

"Oui, ça l'est," she agrees.  "Peut-être," she adds.   _Maybe_.  

She texts Stefano an update, the dramatics at the rink, her almost-agreement with Zach, and wakes up with a single message in reply: "Lol but do be careful!  you know the americans and how they confuse friendship and romance!"  

 

*

 

That Friday night, she leaves Guillaume on the couch, watching old episodes of _Game of Thrones_ and writing an epic text message love letter to Paul-Marie, to eat kale salad with Zach, watching _Frida_ on his laptop. 

“Amusez-tu bien!” Guillaume had called over his shoulder, the moment before she closed the door.  “Être prudent!”

“C'est pas tes oignons!” she had called back, rolling her eyes.

When Zach starts posing her for an Instagram picture, however, she starts to think that Guillaume might have had a point.  

"Madi wants to do our free dance to this music," Zach says doubtfully, after he spends about forty minutes taking, filtering, and posting a picture with just the right commentary.  "But I don't know, I think it's a little _on the nose_."  

"Peut-être," Gabi says, again, suddenly, inexplicably sad.  "Frida and Diego always found their way back together, again.  Some things are written in the stars."


End file.
